Qumran and Jericho

After toweling off all of the Dead Sea water, the day trip advanced along the coast of the Dead Sea to a place called Qumran.

Seriously, how does a desert nomad "wander into" that cave?

Qumran is the place where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.  The Dead Sea scrolls are a group of documents recounting the life of Jesus.  The writings were banned by the early church and considered to be heretical.  Most of the copies of them were destroyed.  It appears that some religious sects moved out to the desert near the Dead Sea and maintained copies of these works.  They put them into a cave in the mountain to hide them (back in the day, unless you were very good at fighting lions in the Colosseum, you didn't want to get caught with heretical writings, so hiding them made sense).  Then, apparently, they forgot about them and left.

Nearly two thousand years later, some local nomads were wandering around and found a cave filled with jars.  The cave was near the Dead Sea.  The jars contained scrolls.  Boom -> Dead Sea scrolls.

Mark found a sign.  If he had turned around, he would have seen the caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.  Oh, well, maybe next time, Mark.

It is a well-established fact of Circle Pines lore that one of Mark's hobbies in high school was translating the Dead Sea scrolls.  He would sit for hours translating the ancient writings into English, an accomplishment made all the more impressive by the fact that he does not speak Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin or whatever other language the scrolls were written (astute observers will note that Mark barely speaks English, so the translation probably has problems on both ends).  So this visit was like Mark's "Graceland."

After seeing the caves at Qumran, the group piled back into the van and made the trip to Jericho.

Photo of an actual woman in Jericho.

Jericho bills itself as the oldest city in the world.  With the qualifier that we are talking about only the cities which have been continuously occupied (i.e. if we do not count cities that existed at one point in history but have since gone out of business), this claim may be true.  Jericho can trace its roots back for thousands of years.  Some of this age is demonstrated in the on-going excavation project in the city.

Anne circumvents the "Guard Duck" security system.

Inside the excavation area it is possible to view the walls that were constructed during various periods in the city's history and where the newer walls were built upon the ruins of the older walls.

Modern Jericho claims two major biblical sites.  First, it has the Jericho tree.

Popular climbing tree for tax collectors.  Ironically, in order to climb it now, visitors must pay a tax.

The locals claim that this is the tree that the tax collector named Zacchaeus climbed so that he would be able to see Jesus when he passed through the city.

The second major biblical site in Jericho is the Mount of Temptation.  Jerichoians Jericadians Jerichoese The people who live in Jericho claim that this mountain is the place where Jesus stayed for 40 days and 40 nights and resisted temptation.

On this site, there are two main buildings, one which you may expect, the other might be a bit of a surprise.  The first is a seminary.  Totally predictable: there are seminaries virtually everywhere in this part of the world.  The second building is a huge, high-quality restaurant.

Seminary on the left, restaurant slightly below and on the right.

Anne and Mark did not take the cable car to the seminary and restaurant.  It was getting late, so eating at the restaurant was a reasonable idea.  However, there was something uncomfortable about having a nice, expensive meal at a place that was revered because it was the place where Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights.  It would have been difficult to enjoy a nice falafel with that comparison bouncing around in the mind.